Author of Fighting the Devil in Dixie signing book at 5 tonight

Author Wayne Greenhaw interviewed a number of Klansmen for his new book, Fighting the Devil in Dixie: How Civil Rights Activists Took on the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama.

Wayne Greenhaw

Greenhaw — a veteran journalist who knew then-Alabama Gov. George Wallace and Martin Luther King Jr. — is signing at Lemuria Books in Jackson, Miss., at 5 p.m. Thursday, March 3.

Greenhaw, who previously wrote about the Montgomery Bus Boycott, decided to tell his own story as well as stories from those days.

He even interviewed Klansmen for their perspectives.

“Talking to a number of the Klansmen today I find that for the most part they are not remorseful,” he said. “One here only several weeks ago told that today ‘many of my friends are black.’ As he talked more and more, the hatefulness seeps out from his words. And as I listen to many white businessmen in Montgomery I discover that racist attitudes persist.”

When he talks with young African Americans in Alabama, “I discover they know little about their own history,” he said. “After a recent talk at a community college in north Alabama, a student said, ‘I didn’t know Governor George Wallace was a racist.’ I was astounded. Many of them, I think, want to know about the foot soldiers of the cause but have never been taught.”

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About The Author

Jerry Mitchell, an investigative reporter for The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., runs Journey to Justice, a blog that explores the intersection of justice and culture in this place we call the United States​. His work has helped put four Klansmen behind bars, including the assassin of NAACP leader Medgar Evers in 1963 and the man who orchestrated the Klan's 1964 killings of three civil rights workers. His latest stories have helped lead to the arrest of serial killer suspect Felix Vail — the last known person seen with three women. Mitchell, a 2009 MacArthur fellow, is writing a book on cold cases from the civil rights era.